Iraq: Coalition of the Drilling (1)

(Republished on Oct. 31, because of site problems)

At first, we had the Coalition of the Willing (US-satellite states helping militarily in Iraq),
soon joined by the Coalition of the Billing (best known: Cheney's KBR-branch of Halliburton, who charge up to 60% of the price of services for consulting, security and other "overhead).

In Afghanistan, the Coalition of the Willing, transforms into the Coalition of the Killing, as they are killing blindly some dozens of 'Taliban' every week in Southern Afghanistan: Farmers, their wives and children, hit by Apache-helicopter launched cluster bombs.

But all this was only a foreplay to the Coalition of the Drilling's coming out from behind the screens. (I owe this pun to a commenter on Joshua Holland's post on AlterNet, see below).

The Coalition of the Drilling are the four big Oil Companies, formerly known as "The Seven Sisters", for mergers reduced their number from seven to four. But they are not alone: A swarm of subsidiary, servicing business, such as Oil Services Company Halliburton , were present at Vice President Dick Cheney's conference table, when he developed the infamous new energy legislation (2001/2002) for the US, in secret meetings, the details of which he consistently refuses to share with the US Congress.

After all, it has taken a long time, after the 2003 invasion, before the genuine objectives of the Iraq invasion show up in a way, so as nobody can deny them any more. Why? Some facts.

Somewhere, somehow, at the start of the post-invasion aera, somewhat has gone very wrong.

The original scenario was not an occupation of the country, but the instauration of Achmad Chalabi as "liberator" and interim president, while an American, Pentagon-appointed representative (...) was to initiate, province by province and region by region (and tribe after tribe, clan after clan), a local cleansing of Saddamists. Loyalty of the traditional chiefs, could be bought, was the idea.
Meanwhile, Chalabi was to initiate a great "reform" of the economy, to be legitimized through a referendum or a sort of loja jirga of clan chiefs. (It is only at the insistance of Ajatollah Sistani, that Bush accepted general free elections in the beginning of 2004).

Parts of that scenario, oddly enough, continued to occur, while Bremer (State Department) acted as Governor on behalf of the US as occupying power. An odd incident, was the Iraqi who acted for some days as Mayor of Bagdad. He had been appointed by Chalabi and the Pentagon before the invasion, and presumably, he had not understood, that the programme had been changed. Chalabi himself, also had to adapt to the new rules, and he did so with his well-known flexibility, betting on two or more horses at the same time (his Pentagon friends, the oil ministry, his Shiite - and his Iran connections).
The Pentagon imposes its own original scenario
What the Pentagon did, was ... denying the intentions of its president and supreme commander (but, maybe, that commander wasn't unhappy with it). It effectively isolated Bremer and his Provisional Governing Council. It just followed the scenario that had been decided before.
At first, in Bagdad, only the oil ministry was occupied (and the oil infrastructure in the country) - not the ministry of the interior (essential, if the "course" had been "democratization"), neither that of Education (idem), and least of all the ministry of Culture (so that a big part of the historical treasures in the Museums has been looted and/or destroyed). Even the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad was not really taken over, which would have been logical if the US really had been worried over "Weapons of Mass Destruction".
Barely some weeks after the occupation of Baghdad, Rumsfeld announced, that the American Army was to establish huge military bases in the country, replacing the ones in Saudi-Arabia.
That was not merely an announcement, but it told what was already going on.
A huge US military base in a former Saddam Hussein palace complex near the Baghdad Airport was constructed, including all sorts of facilities, clearly built to last for many years.

But what about the Iraqi Oil?
Officially, the US has always maintained, that "the oil revenues belong to the Iraqi people". At a moment of inattention, however, Wolfowitz (then undersecretay at the Pentagon) told Congress, that "oil was going to pay for all the costs of war and occupation". This moment of inattention was a moment of truth: During it's one year reign, the "Coalition Provisional Authority" (CPA) indeed used practically all (dwindling) oil revenues of Iraq for paying costs of occupation, security and American contractors. When the Allawi government took over, there was nothing left.

Meanwhile, at the Doha meeting of the WTA, the then Iraqi minister of economy stunned the audience, telling them, that his government was pusuing a Pinochet-like policy of complete denationalization, stimulating foreign investment, in other words a sudden and total free market policy. Like Wolfowitz, he spoke too early and too bluntly.

Hindered by the sabotage acts on the installations and pipelines, impeded also by the incompetence of Halliburton "reparations" and "upgrading", now, at last, the "great prize" of the Bush policy in Iraq is showing up.
It is told in:

AlterNet: Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil ( by Joshua Holland)

Iraq's oil sector remains largely undeveloped. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi (no relation to the neocons' favorite exile, Ahmed Chalabi) told the Associated Press that "Iraq has more oil fields that have been discovered, but not developed, than any other country in the world." British-based analyst Mohammad Al-Gallani told the Canadian Press that of 526 prospective drilling sites, just 125 have been opened.

But the real gem -- what one oil consultant called the "Holy Grail" of the industry -- lies in Iraq's vast western desert. It's one of the last "virgin" fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to No. 1 in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country's current centers of production in the north, near Kirkuk, and in the south near Basra. The Nation's Aram Roston predicts Iraq's western desert will yield "untold riches."

Iraq also may have large natural gas deposits that so far remain virtually unexplored. [...]

But even "untold riches" don't tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq's petroleum law shakes out, the country's enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that "even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system." Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country's output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely.

Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell -- that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts. "The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States," he said.

How they are going to do so, and what kind of contracts they will have, is told in the second part of this article.

Iraq: Coalition of the Drilling (3)

This is the third and last sequence of The Iraq: Coalition of the Drilling series.

The new Iraqi Constitution legalizes plundering of it's oil resources by foreign companies

Joshua Holland on AlterNet:

Of course, the plans for Iraq's legal framework for oil have to be viewed in the context of the overall transformation of the Iraqi economy. Clearly, the idea was to pursue a radical corporatist agenda during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority when the U.S. occupation forces were a de facto dictatorship. And that's just what happened; under L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, corporate taxes were slashed, a flat-tax on income was established, rules allowing multinationals to pull all of their profits from the country and a series of other provisions were enacted. These were then integrated into the Iraqi Constitution and remain in effect today.

Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government "develop oil and gas wealth … relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment." The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq's oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975.

Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a "Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq's vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi's right to education, health care, housing, and other social services." "Social justice," the draft declared, "is the basis of building society."

June 2, 2004: celebration of the new "Iraqi" consitution with Alawi, Chalabi and Brahimi (photo: New York Times)

What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena:

While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq's constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, "We haven't played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected." A Sunni negotiator concluded: "This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one."

With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq's oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land -- and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits -- the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That's more than six times the country's annual budget.

Now we know, what it meant, "Staying the Course".

The course was and is: control over the Iraqi oil reserves and - production, as well as its commercialisation. Keeping the Chinese and the Indians (and the Europeans) out, influence the OPEC cartel. What the US needs in Iraq, is "stabilization". No matter, if that stabilization takes the shape of a dictatorship, a democracy, a loose confederacy of three or four small states, - whatever. As long as they do not intervene into the oil business.

All the other talk, starting with the WMD and continuing with the so-called mission of imposing democracy, is empty noise, serving the manipulation of public opinion.

In this respect, Bush was right, for once, when he said that "staying the course" means changing the tactics, as often as the hidden goal of the intervention is endangered.

But the Iraqi- and the other Middle East elites are not as dumb as Cheney and the Neocons think: An Americanization of the Iraqi oil resources will be experienced by Saudis, Iranians, even Kowaitians and Nigerians, as a direct attack against their vital interests. China, India and Russia will not hesitate to lend them support.

The Big Oil Struggle is only just beginning.

The torture legislation: Shame on the US!

Update: October 3, 2006.
Ah, we all agree. The torture legislation, rushed through Congress, is disastrous. Everybody in the reasonable Left, said so. What can an Alien like me do here?
I read the revelations about the torturing prisons, the renditions, the mock trials before "militaty commissions". It appears, that, first, the FBI (2003) refused to go along. Then, even the CIA and its waterboarding contractors, after the Supreme Court judged it wrong (2005), went on strike. Bush had to do something.
Here is, how he twisted the case, interpreting the FBI, CIA and Justice refusals as a protest against the "vagueness" of the Geneva Convention. Source: CNN.com - Ivins: Saying something over again doesn't make it true - Sep 22, 2006:

(Ivins:)"Bush kept insisting the legislation to permit such tribunals is vital and 'the program will not go forward without it' because young intelligence officers might be accused of breaking the law(!)."

Bush: 'Let's see if I can put it (Article III of the Geneva Convention) this way for people to understand. There is a very vague standard that the (U.S. Supreme) Court said must kind of be the guide for our conduct in the war on terror and detainee policy. It's so vague that it's impossible to ask anybody to participate in the program for fear ... of breaking the law. That's the problem.'

Ivins: "Actually, the problem is the proposed program of tribunals is illegal -- and not young intelligence officers but potentially old war criminals are at risk, as well."

Indeed. The situation looked hopeless for Bush. Soon, he would have had to liberate Charles Graner from jail, as the only person in the US, who would greedily act as torturer in the Bush & Cheney way. And Lynddie England for the women.
But with a diabolic mastership, he succeeded in having his way with Congress.
The new legislation makes an exception for people who are deemed "terrorists" (without a justicial check on the executive) in this, that they may be tortured, are deprived of the rights, any accused in the world has, as to information about the facts he is accused of, etc.
And, listen well, this is US legislation about foreign people. For the time being, American citizens are to be treated in the US in a traditional way. That may change, in the future.

Now, the question to me, is, if the US Army, that has to bear the full burden of this barbaric policy, will execute it without problems. The US army is not built for that job. It goes against its traditions and morals. I guess, that, finally, this whole torture and mock tribunal business will be privatized, and bought with contractors. In Iraq, this is already largely done this way.
And the world outside of the US?
Even staunch allies of the US, who are invited to host American military on their soil, will think twice about it. Even if you are yourself a ruthless dictator, it must be a hard decision, to accept a community of professional torturers and "Nacht-und-Nebel" *) mock-tribunals on your doorstep.

I think, that a complaint with the old International Court in the Hague (that judges affairs between states) has a good chance to end in a shameful condemnation of the United States of America.

*) "Nacht und Nebel" prisoners in Nazi Germany, were prisoners who were judged summarily and secretly by mock tribunals and who disappeared afterwards into the "dark and the fog" of concentration camps.

Plamegate, Armitage, Hitchens.

Update: October 3, 2006.
Waiting on my desk: Plamegate's ridiculous conclusion. By Christopher Hitchens in Slate Magazine:

As most of us have long suspected, the man who told Novak about Valerie Plame was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department and, with his boss, an assiduous underminer of the president's war policy.
(His and Powell's—and George Tenet's—fingerprints are all over Bob Woodward's 'insider' accounts of post-9/11 policy planning, which helps clear up another nonmystery: Woodward's revelation several months ago that he had known all along about the Wilson-Plame connection and considered it to be no big deal.)

Read my lips: There is NO conclusion yet for "Plamegate".
From the documents released up to this moment, only one conclusion can be made.
There has been an organized, concerted, Cheney-led, intrigue against the CIA, againist Valerie Plame, with the stated object,

• to undermine the credibility of her husband's report on the Central African Republic (i.e. that there has never been a beginning of a deal about yellowcake with Saddam Hussein),

and with the UNstated objects,

• to dislodge the CIA frontstore in Istanbul, led by Plame, that monitored Middle East nuclear fuel dealings by Israel, Turkey, Iran, and, probably other countries in the region,
• to bring the CIA as a whole in discredit, so as to eliminate a source of truths that ran counter to the Bush war propaganda.

As usual, Christopher Hitchens, in his zealotry, unwittingly reveals these intentions.
The attack by Cheney, Libby, Rove et alia was not directed against Ms Plame or her husband, but against Colin Powell, Charles Tenet (CIA), and Richard Armitage, who signed the Manifest for an American Century in 1998, was one of their pawns in the enemy land of the State Department. Poor Richard, who couldn't help to like his boss, Powell, had been judges "unstable" by the Cheney cabal and the hard core of the Neocons, and was just good for doing dome dirty and nasty shopping.
In an old Stalinist tradition, Armitage was, after being declared lost for the Neocon cause, first forced to do the despicable things, and then, having done his service, sacrified as a scapegoat. Let us compare this story with Stalin's revenge on the old Boshevicks during the 30's. Bukharin, right-leaning Bolshevick, was used against the left oppposition by Stalin in the twenties, then eliminated from power during Stalin's left turn from 1928 on. But the man loved power so much, that he begged for years to be reinstated, renegating his former views. Then, at the next turn in Stalin's policy, he was put in some relatively low position and ordered to write and do some dirty work. When most of the first generation Communists, against whom Bukharin had agitated, had been condemned in "show-trials", in 1938, he was tried and condemned himself for things he had done to please Stalin.
The Hitchens of that place and time, was called Karl Radek, a genial journalist, who was always in the ever changing frontlines to explain, heat up, and construct an ideology for the policy of the day. Radek himself was condemned not long after Bukharin, and disappeared.
He was too intelligent and knew too much.
Hitchens, who is stupid and doesn't know so much, for few people ever tell him anything, will probably not share the fate of Radek.
Like old Karl Marx said in 1849: "In history, things happen as a tragedy at first, and then, later on, repeat themselves as a comedy."